American racing legend Phil Hill passed away last week following complications that arose from his battle with Parkinsons disease. The 1961 World Champion was a truly great driver and his loss will have a big affect on the motorsport community.

Phil Hill’s story is an interesting one in that he was a very unique driver. He is the only American born racer to win the Formula One World Championship, which is a significant achievement given the USA’s massive contribution to motorsport. He can also lay claim to multiple victories at Le Mans (including one the same year that he conquered Formula One) and must be one of the few drivers in the world who has amazingly won both his very first and very last competitive races.

The skills that he honed in America were strong enough to see him race all around the world and he paved the way for others from the USA to do likewise. He was a sensitive and intelligent man who drove with his heart, and it is that for which he will be best remembered.

Phil Hill will be forever linked with Ferrari, the team that he joined with such excitement in the mid fifties but left in such disgust. His time with the Scuderia eloquently sums up his career as well as his personality.

Like many Italian drivers (and unlike most Americans) Hill had a massive passion for Ferrari. He grew up in California working for a European car dealership and spent his time racing as many of the cars as he could. When his parents passed away in 1952 he used his inheritance money to buy a Ferrari that had raced at Le Mans the year before. It was his pride and joy and gave him instant success behind the wheel.

Hill struck up a relationship with Ferrari’s factory dealer in New York and started racing more of the thoroughbreds from Maranello. After proving himself as a great sportscar competitor in the USA, he used his dealership contacts to arrange a meeting with Enzo Ferrari in 1955. He was offered a works Ferrari drive at Le Mans and did well enough to become a part of the successful Ferrari sportscar team over the next few years.

Ferrari’s partnership with Hill seemed like a match made in heaven but the American’s love for the company started to wane early on during his time with the team. He was doing very well in sportscars and took victories in the big races at Sebring and Le Mans, but his true ambitions lay with Formula One. He was far more interested in Grand Prix racing than anything else and felt his chances were slipping away because Ferrari was slow to promote its drivers.

His frustrations became public when he hired a privately owned Maserati to make his Formula One debut. His first Grand Prix was at Rheims in 1958 and he finished a very respectable seventh. There were six other men driving Maserati’s that day, and the only one of those men that beat Phil Hill was Juan Manual Fangio. That’s not a bad effort for a rookie.

Ferrari took notice and signed Hill to drive in selected races throughout the remainder of the 1958 season. He snagged a pair of podiums and helped Ferrari’s team leader, Mike Hawthorn, win the World Championship by ceding position at the final Grand Prix in Morocco. His driving was first-rate and he rightly secured a fulltime Scuderia drive.

1960 was not a good year for Ferrari because they remained one of the last teams to hold onto a front engined car. The Dino 246 was quick in a straight line but the chassis was too slow and heavy to be effective. With that in mind, the Italian Grand Prix organisers decided to make use of the fearsome Monza banking to make their circuit even faster and Hill was able to take advantage of this to claim his first Grand Prix victory. He wrote himself into the history books by becoming the first American to achieve such a feat.

Ferrari skipped the last round of the 1960 season to focus on their 1961 challenger, and it’s probably a good thing they did because the famous Sharknose Ferrari was the dominant machine of the season. Ferrari comfortably won the Constructors World Championship and it was simply a question of which of their men would claim driver’s honours. Phil Hill drove superbly and finished off the podium just once all year, and that was due to technical problems. He also won the Le Mans 24 hours just a week before taking victory in the Belgian Grand Prix and was at the very peak of his abilities.

At the end of the season the championship would be decided in a straight fight between Hill and fellow Ferrari driver Wolfgang Von Trips.

Their battle was to end in tragedy.

At the penultimate race in Monza, Von Trips was killed in a horrific crash that also claimed the lives of 14 spectators. Hill took the victory that day and secured enough points to win the world title, but it was certainly not the way he wanted to become champion. Ferrari withdrew from the final race of the season and Hill was one of the pallbearers at Von Trips’ funeral.

Phil Hill didn’t win another Grand Prix following his championship triumph. The 1962 Ferrari was decidedly average and Hill was falling out of favour with the team.

The American didn’t like the way that Enzo Ferrari took advantage of his passion for the team by paying him a pittance, and he didn’t like the way that Enzo let engineers unfairly blame drivers for poor results. He was also frustrated that Ferrari would only participate in the season ending US Grand Prix if the championship depended on it, which often robbed Hill of the chance to race in front of his home crowd.

Enzo Ferrari treated his drivers poorly because he believed they were nowhere near as important as his cars, and since Phil Hill was a sensitive man he did not enjoy being in such an environment.

Hill grew tired of Ferrari and the passion that he used to have for the team was gone. He wasn’t the only person who felt that way and in 1962 a large number of staff left Maranello and started their own team called ATS. Hill joined them as soon as his contract expired.

The move marked the end of Hill’s F1 career because ATS never really got off the ground. He continued to drive in Formula One until 1966 with a variety of teams, but finished just six races in his last four years.

Phil Hill raced with his heart and was out there simply because he enjoyed driving. Long after retirement he continued to be heavily involved with the historic racing scene because he had such a huge passion for the cars. It was that passion that drove him to Ferrari from America, and it was that passion that made him World Champion.

Not many drivers have raced in the most dangerous era of Formula One and walked away without a single injury. Not many drivers have stood up to Enzo Ferrari, and not many have created a new path for their countrymen to follow.

Phil Hill was a very unique driver who added colour to one of the most exciting times in the sport’s history. His loss is significant, and saddening.

Phil Hill is survived by his wife, son, daughter, stepdaughter, and four grandchildren.

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